By: Julia Shteyman
I am a Jew with a tattoo.
As we all grew up, we always heard our Jewish parents and grandparents, amongst others say: "If you get a tattoo, you can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery." I know my family always said that to me; but I still went and got one.
One of the reasons Jewish culture opposes tattoos is that Jews were involuntarily marked in concentration camps. In the last few years the tattoo culture has grown and become less of a taboo. I look around and I see many of my Jewish friends with tattoos on them. Andy Abrams, a filmmaker, has spent five years making a documentary called “Tattoo Jew.” It is interesting to see that the majority of tattooed Jews that he interviewed, have Tattoos of the Star of David, of Hebrew words and memorials to the Holocaust. My first tattoo was in fact the Star of David.. According to the article, "The eight rabbinical scholars interviewed for this article, from institutions like the Jewish Theological Seminary and Yeshiva University, said it’s an urban legend, most likely started because a specific cemetery had a policy against tattoos". What do you think about this myth and Jews who have tattoos?
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